My plan was to wake up early this morning and drive to Connecticut to meet friends and enjoy some music, but my stomach is killing me. It’s something I ate, I guess. I’m still hoping to go, but the outlook is uncertain.
The Senate continues to be an unmitigated mess and California is drowning as a result.
Republican governors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Jodi Rell of Connecticut have supported federal assistance to states to prevent thousands of teachers from losing their jobs because of budget shortages.
Schwarzenegger this month declared a fiscal emergency in California, ordering thousands of state employees to take furloughs to help close a nearly $20 billion budget shortfall.
The Republicans don’t care. Harry Reid will try again on Monday to get a vote on some money for the states. Maybe it will pass. Maybe it won’t.
School is so overrated.
Feel better BooMan!
Of all the states I don’t feel that much sympathy for, California is at the top of the list. They have the largest economy in the US and when they’re treated as their own entity they’re within the top 10 economies in the freaking world. They have a tax base that should be able to cover everything in their budget, and could fix all of these problems for themselves if they wanted to with a fairly minor set of tax increases.
But they won’t, because the majority of their electorate appears be made up of a combination of greedy assholes and functional morons who think that you can get everything you want without having to pay for it. I really feel bad for the good people in California, but they appear to be a minority and they’re surrounded by assholes and idiots.
The only thing that has me holding out sympathy for California is that I know my state is just as full of assholes and idiots. So I sympathize. But it’s obnoxious to see Schwarzeneggar standing their crying about the feds when his own goddamn state should be able to pay for itself. It’s not like he’s the governor of West Virginia or Kentucky or something.
Branding all Californians for the failure of our government system is a little like taking credit for America electing Bush. We are not greedy assholes, and idiots, sorry. Maybe our fiscal mess would be a little less if we were not the largest donor state in the country, giving more in taxes per capita and getting less in federal spending than any other state in the country. So yes, Schwarzennegger is right, we need federal relief, and maybe states with lower unemployment rates should be pitching in to help US right now. http://www.scribd.com/doc/8229012/Tax-Donor-or-Contrib-States.
As I said – I have sympathy because I’m surrounded by assholes and idiots myself. I just don’t have as much as I do for a state that really doesn’t have the capability of digging itself out, like West Virginia. Your economy actually can handle everything in your state budget – it’s just that your collection of assholes and idiots won’t let you do it. (And I took pains to point out that I wasn’t speaking about everyone in California – I know lots of good, frustrated people in Cali. They’re just surrounded by assholes and morons).
Your legislature could solve this problem with the stroke of a pen but they won’t – so it isn’t an economic failure, it’s a political failure. Your system is messed up and until you get some people to fix what’s wrong California is going to continue to be messed up. Getting more money out of the feds – even if I agree with you that it was originally your money – isn’t a long term answer. And given the political realities, it isn’t even a short-term answer. The real answer is to fix a system that makes it possible for a state with the 8th biggest economy on the planet to have a government in bankruptcy.
Please be aware that Prop 13, that began this mess, passed when I was in the third grade. I did not vote for it.
Not only prop 13 but also when that was voted in people voted to make the budget a 2/3’s vote which holds us hostage to the minority in our legislature at budget time. This stupid law now enshrined in our constitution.
This means that like the Senate our legislature which tends to majority of dems is held hostage by republicans at budget time….and every year a mess ensues.
Hope you get better and it’s not a food allergy. Those things suck.
The only thing that’s going to fix this country is a revolution. Either that, or the DLC/Blue Dogs are going to have to be as discredited as Breitbart .. and I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon .. since they are corporate whores
Be careful what you wish for.
Which — the revolution or the end of the bluedogs/corporate whores? The former more and more looks like the necessary condition for the latter.
The problem is that if a revolution came it would more likely be a right-wing one. They already control the media and the military. God help us if there ever is another 9/11 event to take place.
I hope it doesn’t happen but even my grandpa could see it coming thirty years ago. Rich people don’t give up power just because we ask or demand it. The one thing John Edwards was right about was you have to take it from them.
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Recession Continues to Batter State Budgets; State Responses Could Slow Recovery
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."A spending goal too small for aging America
Now obviously I think the entire commission was a mistake but there’s no point in going there.